Industrial Design Major Wins Love Family Foundation Award

Karis Wang uses a computer in studio.
Photo: School of Industrial Design
Karis Wang works in the ID4061 Capstone Studio in the School of Industrial Design.
Ann Hoevel | April 11, 2023 — Atlanta, GA

Industrial Design major Karis Wang has been selected to receive the 2023 Love Family Foundation Scholarship. The $10,000 scholarship is awarded annually to the Georgia Tech graduating senior who has the most outstanding academic record in their class.

Wang has a 4.0 GPA with a total of 146 credit hours, including a minor in Computing and People. She is the first student from the College of Design to win this prestigious award.

The award is one of the highest academic honors given to an undergraduate student. Each of the six colleges nominates its top graduating student, and the winner is ultimately selected by the academic associate deans in coordination with the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE).  The remaining five finalists of the Love Award will receive the Provost’s Academic Excellence Award ($2,000) generously sponsored by the Love Family Foundation, and recognition at the annual Student Honors program.

“Early on in my first semester of college, I discovered I loved the creativity and human aspect of designing objects,” Wang said. “The design field allowed me to rekindle my love for arts, create impactful experiences for others, and think critically about how innovation can shape our future.”

She used her digital design lessons to become the lead Visual/UX designer for the Institute’s Office of Information Technology in her second year. “I produce high-quality mockups, iconography, and graphic design assets to improve student experience across multiple Georgia Tech platforms,” she said.

Wang added an REU Summer Internship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, a released app called PocketMacros, and a UX Design Internship at Microsoft’s Bing Expression and Systems team to her list of accomplishments in the next two years. Now, she leads a design bootcamp for her fellow Georgia Tech students.

“Mentoring students to enter the product design world is an extremely impactful experience to me,” she said. “There have been multiple times where I’ve been unsure, switched career paths, or wanted to try something new. I’m thankful for the experiences at Georgia Tech that have allowed me to embrace this exploration.”

AI at the School of Industrial Design

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dall-E exhibit at the College of Design.
Photo: School of Industrial Design
The School of Industrial Design Capstone studio exhibition, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love DALL-E, inspired by Karis Wang’s design work.

Wang’s Capstone studio professor Roger Ball proudly points out that she’s teaching faculty as well.

“It was Karis who introduced my ID4061 studio to the world of AI visualization last fall,” Ball said. “Karis was my top student and her Capstone project Zore introduced design taxonomies into the prompt process. The project output, a plugin for the AI Midjourney, was innovative and on-trend.”

The project let the entire studio to launch a successful exhibition called How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love DALL-E. (The exhibit will be featured in this month’s edition of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s INNOVATION magazine.) Several colleagues and exhibit guests have inquired about purchasing the studio’s AI-generate artwork, Ball said.

“Karis’s stunning image Human Centered Design has become one of the iconic images of the exhibition,” Ball said.

DALL-E 2 is an open-source website that generates realistic images and art from a well-described text prompt, Ball said. And while it may be a natural reaction for designers to wonder if an AI tool like DALL-E 2 could displace their jobs, Wang immediately saw it as a tool for new design methods, Ball said.

It’s also become her career. “After graduation, I will be moving to Seattle to continue my adventures at Microsoft, designing visuals and experiences for Bing as they embark on a new, AI-driven pathway,” she said.

But before that, Wang and her fellow Capstone students will tutor students from Atlanta’s Morningside Elementary school to use AI in a workshop called Cloudy, With a Chance of AI. They will create AI-driven pictures that will be shown at the school’s end-of-year open house.

 

 

Karis Wang's AI-generated artwork called Human Centered Design
Karis Wang's AI-generated image called "Human Centered Design."

 

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Ann Hoevel
Director of Communications
College of Design
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